Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

Of the attempt of Columbus to collect tribute from the native population, and its Troubles with the Indians. consequences in developing the system of repartimientos out of which grew Indian slavery, I shall treat in a future chapter.[579] That attempt, which was ill-advised and ill-managed, was part of a plan for checking wanton depredations and regulating the relations between the Spaniards and the Indians. The colonists behaved so badly toward the red men that the chieftain Caonabo, who had destroyed La Navidad the year before, now formed a scheme[580] for a general alliance among the native tribes, hoping with sufficient numbers to overwhelm and exterminate the strangers, in spite of their solid-hoofed monsters and death-dealing thunderbolts. This scheme was revealed to Columbus, soon after his return from the coast of Cuba, by the chieftain Guacanagari, who was an enemy to Caonabo and courted the friendship of the Spaniards. Alonso de Ojeda, by a daring stratagem, captured Caonabo and brought him to Columbus, who treated him kindly but kept him a prisoner until it should be convenient to send him to Spain. But this chieftain's scheme was nevertheless put in operation through the influence of his principal wife Anacaona. An Indian war broke out; roaming bands of Spaniards were ambushed and massacred; and there was fighting in the field, where the natives—assailed by firearms and cross-bows, horses and bloodhounds—were wofully defeated.